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FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" Video added

FishBeast

Member
Joined
27 May 2009
Messages
264
Location
Australia
*UPDATED 20/5/11*

Size: 500 Ltr

Filtration: 2x 2400 Ltr/Hr Canister

Wave Maker: 12000 Ltr/Hr - Reduced to 6000 Ltr/Hr and then removed completely as it was too hectic.

Total Filtration: 9.6 turnover/Hr
Total Turnover: 9.6 turnover/Hr

Lighting: 156w 6500k T5 for 8.5 hrs a day
156w 10,000k T5 for 8.5 hrs a day


Co2: Pressurised. Comes on 2 hours before lights on and off 2 hours before lights off. Currently sitting between green and yellow.

Substrate: Kitty litter with slow release ferts buried within
ADA Amazon II
Nutrient: EI Dry salts

Inhabitants: (Not final)

Gyrinocheilus aymonieri, Sucking Catfish
Alot of Shrimp.
Some Rams Horn snails.

Flora:
Glossostigma Elatiniodes
Various local mosses
Some hair grass which I haven't decided on yet.
Pogostemon Helferi

My new setup is a lawn of Glosso under the shadaow of mossy "trees".

The tank took 17 hours to pull down and re setup and involved alot of pain staking work. All went well on the first day and then disaster struck the next morning. I origionally was not going to post this journal until I had it fully planted but because I can use advice on it I have decided to post this now.

Enjoy!

These are the sticks which will become the trees. These I sourced from local dead pine trees.
IMG_4387.jpg


The mosses:
IMG_4422.jpg


Placing the Kitty Litter:
IMG_4405.jpg


The slow release fertiliser:
IMG_4381.jpg


The Glosso and planting the glosso:
IMG_4393.jpg

IMG_4418.jpg


Placing the moss onto one of the trees. I tied it onto the wood with cotton. Very time consuming :)
IMG_4424.jpg


Filling the tank:
IMG_4430.jpg


I did a ammonia test later after putting water in and noticed 0.25-0.50 ppm and thought, "Yeah sweet, I have 2 cycled filters." and put all of my fish in. The next day when I checked ammonia the test water went blue. It only shows as high as green on the chart. I did a 80% water change and the ammonia went down to 8ppm. Still way too high. I then setup one hose syphoning water from the tank and another filling at about the same rate.

I did this for a couple of hours and the ammonia level went down to 4 ppm. The next morning it was high again so I spent another 2 hours doing the same water transfer. I fell asleep and when I woke I saw a columbian tetra floating.

I monitored the tank closely and saw that I had no water movement on the surface. I figure toxic level of ammonia reduing the fishes abilty to breath combined with the lack of heavy surface movement spelled disaster. I turned my wave maker on but the damage had been done.

Over the next hour I lossed:
11 mostly adult Rainbows
1 Sucking cat
2 Columbian tetras
3 Khuli Loaches

I transfered the rest of my fish to a makeshift holding tank where they have stopped dying.

I have started my co2 and dosing via EI method.
I will be doing a large water change late every day until the ammonia spike drops. I had read of people putting fish in before the spike drops when using amazonia and doing large water changes. I underestimated how high the spike would be.

Did I kill my fish by trying to overdo the water change? Would I have been better off doing a single large water change every day?

I need to know also if the high levels of ammonia combined with light, co2 and nutrients in the water colum will make my plants melt? I think I have read something about this before from Tom.

I do not beleive that the slow release fertiliser is responsible for high spike. I think that it is soley the aqasoil.

Thanks for reading this long, photo heavy post. Hopefully I will have some good news in the comming few weeks.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Tony Swinney said:
This could look stunning, when it matures - sorry to hear about your problems though :( I dont wish to put doubts in your mind, but I'm sure i'd read somewhere that pine couldnt be used in aquariums for some reason - I'll try to find where I'd read that.

Tony

I feel fairly confident that the pine should be ok. It has been dead and dry for a very long time. I have not boiled it and it is leaching tannins into the water.

It is funny though that the fish were doing better when I was not constantly changing the water.

So far I have lossed a total of 14 Rainbows.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Silly question but when you were changing the water did you add anything to take care of the chlorine ?
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Nitrogen as ammonia? Is that right and if so, a good or bad thing?

Bad thing now I read the above posts fully...I wonder if the plant fertiliser you added is the cause of the ammonia spike?
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Mortis said:
Silly question but when you were changing the water did you add anything to take care of the chlorine ?

I use seachem prime. It claims to fix ammonia in the water but it didn't.

nry said:
Nitrogen as ammonia? Is that right and if so, a good or bad thing?

Bad thing now I read the above posts fully...I wonder if the plant fertiliser you added is the cause of the ammonia spike?

I don't beleive that it is because it is buried within the kitty litter and hasn't been exposed to the water outside of itself.
That is my oppinion but time will tell.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

I have a question. When I planted the Glosso I cut the stems into 1-2 inch lengths and dragged them horizonally into the substrate. From what I understand I have plenty of light for it but they are reaching up and growth vertically very rapidly.

After I turned all my pumps on I found that the stems rose up out of the substrate alot. If you look at the way I planted in the photo up top compared to now I am a little concerned that they will have trouble growing horizontally.

Is it perhaps just a matter of pruning then as they grow upwards?

Here is a picture of it in my tank as of today. (I have only had the co2 running at 30-40 ppm for 2 days)
IMG_4435.jpg


Here is a pic of it the day I collected it from the wild.
IMG_3977.jpg


And lastly a picture of it in its natural habitat.
IMG_4005-1.jpg


In some pictures I see on the net my glosso looks a little different. The leaves are longer than some and it dosn't appear to grow horizontally in the same pattern.

Any thoughts welcome.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Liking that wood setup! That should look superb once it's matured.......as for the Glosso, from what I understand of it, and from my own experiences with it, simply trim it back hard and it should start creeping :thumbup:
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Glosso tends to like a lot of light to keep low, pruning sometimes helps to make it shot runners along the substrate so you should do that, always leave at least 2 leaves on the runners. If it still grows upwards then you will need to increase light levels and everything else that goes with it.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

B7fec said:
Liking that wood setup! That should look superb once it's matured.......as for the Glosso, from what I understand of it, and from my own experiences with it, simply trim it back hard and it should start creeping :thumbup:

Thanks B7fec. I am going to take strands which I snip off or which dissconnect from the wood and zip tie them in bare places and over time I am hoping that they grow in well. I think it will require alot of maintanence :D

LondonDragon said:
Glosso tends to like a lot of light to keep low, pruning sometimes helps to make it shot runners along the substrate so you should do that, always leave at least 2 leaves on the runners. If it still grows upwards then you will need to increase light levels and everything else that goes with it.

Thanks LondonDragon.
It has only been a short period of time for the plants to adapt to submersed form (1 week). I am unable to run half of my other t5 light so I have increased the light to 2.9 WPG.

I am currently doing a 80% water change every 2 days for the ammonia. I dose my EI once every water change.

I have modified my EI to:

2 TBSP KNO3
1 and a half TBSP Mono Potassium Phosphate (28% K, 22% P)
1 and a half TBSP Traces
Reccommended amount of suppliers Gluteraldehyde mix.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

foxfish said:
I am sure I recently read in one of Cegs informative post that lack of light was not the caurse of plants growing upward in this manner?

I have increased the light so I will see how it goes.
 
Re: FishBeasts 500 Ltr "Forests Edge" (Blood, sweat & tears)

Added HD video of tank at:

 
Yeah, everyone likes to add more light, but upwards growth has nothing to do with light. This is a flow/CO2 issue especially with emmersed leaves. Further details in http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=14304

While it's probably true that Glosso has a higher light compensation point than mosses or ferns, adding more light is exactly the wrong thing to do at this point in the tanks maturation because it endangers the plants by causing photoinhibition and by triggering algal blooms. One should exercise patience and allow the Glosso to grow with lower light, (the fact that it's growing means that it has enough light) then give it a haircut when there is sufficient mass. The submerged new growth will then tend to grow horizontal.

Cheers,
 
Planting glosso as individual plantlets i.e. one pair of leaves either side of one stem usually helps with horizontal growth. Takes ages to plant, but it's fun if you're weird, like me. :crazy:

It responds well to liquid carbon if CO2 distribution isn't spot on down there.
 
ceg4048 said:
...adding more light is exactly the wrong thing to do at this point in the tanks maturation because it endangers the plants by causing photoinhibition and by triggering algal blooms. One should exercise patience and allow the Glosso to grow with lower light, (the fact that it's growing means that it has enough light) then give it a haircut when there is sufficient mass. The submerged new growth will then tend to grow horizontal.

Cheers,

I think that you are right and thanks for the advice. They are growing very fast and I am now starting to see small shoots comming from the lower nodes. They are experiencing no die back from going to emmersed.

I have switched the light back to 156w from 312w. Alot of algae has came in with the moss that I grew so I think I need to play it safe until the ammonia drops and I can introduce an army of shrimp.

I also made a mistake a while back and ran my filters without treating the chlorine first. I am not seeing any nitrites at all. :twisted:
 
Just a quick update. The ammonia spike has gone and I added about 80 shrimp. I also added the remaining rainbows a few days later. Within one day they ate all of the glosso and most of the shrimp. I gave them away and am now planning to go down the HC route again... Fingers crossed.

I have a question regarding HC. It is summer here and the water in my tank can get up to 30 degrees celcius on a very hot day and I am wondering whether the HC will now grow well in such warm water?
 
Here is an update guys. I am having some major trouble with algae at the moment. I think that it is due to a few reasons. I tried to introduce alot of shrimp and they just about all died (about 100 or so) which I think led to an ammonia spike. Also at the same time I ran out of co2 for a few days and was still waiting for my kno3 replacement order. So my tank went without c02 for about 3 days and without kno3 for a week. I have most of the algae's.

Within a few days my tank turned into this:
IMG_6287.jpg


IMG_6286.jpg


I don't know what type of algae this one is. It literally popped up overnight.
IMG_6283.jpg


I really want to introduce shrimp into the tank again because nothing else seems to clean moss like shrimp do but I just cant seem to keep them alive. I think that they dont feel comforatable in the tank because it is so barren at this stage in its development so they die of stress.

I am also not seeing any significant growth from my remaining glosso which survived being eated by the fish. It just isnt growing despite overall having a good environment. My tank is currently on 30ppm co2, standard EI, 8 hrs 1.2 WPG T5 light, 20+ water turnover per hr so I am stumped on it. So much so that in despiration I changed 2 of my 4 6500K lights out for 10,000K ones.

Check out HD video here:
 
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